What is now known as The Dream Economy is possibly one of the biggest addressable consumer market opportunities today, coupled with the fact that the concept of one’s bucket list is now part of our global consumer vernacular thanks to Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson who starred in the Warner Bros hit movie of 2007, The Bucket List.
The bucket list phenomenon totally distracted former Village Roadshow Global Chief Marketing Officer Tim Carroll so much he decided to make the bold move and leave Village Roadshow in mid-2011 after 11 successful years to develop and then launch BUCKiTDREAM, the world’s first dream platform.
Tim Carroll is realising his dream.
BUCKiTDREAM is an experiential brand and entertainment business, which enables consumers (dreamers) globally to create and share their dreams (their bucket lists) with their social networks and then connect with brands and merchants to transact and fulfill these dream experiences.
BUCKiTDREAM is live and has 100,000 dreamers creating 500,000 dream-experience intentions. Behind this is a world-class analytics engine that can view every dreamer individually (profile, preferences and intentions). BUCKiTDREAM’s secret sauce is proprietary scripts to take the dreamer through each stage of the consumer funnel from dream to plan to transaction – making the future intention data very valuable to media, brands and merchants.
“I personally mentored and guided Tim over the past 11 years in all facets of the entertainment business,” Graham Burke, Carroll’s Village Roadshow boss said. “I am so pleased at how far we have come together. With Tim at the helm we have won all over the world. He is without question one of Australia’s, if not one of the world’s, best entertainment marketers. He is a true businessman and respected by global brands and media across the board. A rare, priceless team member.” Carroll said: “I have learnt from the best entertainment global players in Graham Burke and Village Chairman Robert Kirby.”
The beauty of BUCKiTDREAM is that it predicts consumer behaviour which becomes an amazingly powerful tool for merchants. Carroll said his idea was also fuelled by Harvard Professor Doc Searls’ book, In The Intention Economy. Professor Searls says in his book: “The buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer’s purchase. That’s an easy enough idea – that rather than companies mining analytics for consumer info, customers will simply say what they want, thus forging efficient, close-knit relationships – but relationships with a number of moving parts. Individuals will need ambient connectivity, a private store of personal data, and standardised ways to signal their desires. The businesses that match individuals’ terms will survive.” Carroll, although born, bred and still living in Melbourne, believed his idea had global potential so one of the biggest decisions he made in the early days was to incorporate BUCKiTDREAM in the US and not Australia.
Once that decision was made Carroll set about building a global team and a global shareholder register. And what a team he has built recruiting executives from Ernst & Young, Freehills, Google, Stanford University, Manchester United and IBM.
“Australia is too small a market and too many people don’t believe what’s possible, while in the US they love big ideas and big visions and the US consumers dream big everyday.” Carroll and his global team have pitched the BUCKiTDREAM vision to some of the world’s most influential people from media, brands, commerce, technology and data analytics – and they all backed him.
Here is what some say about Carroll and BUCKiTDREAM.
Marty Pompadur, former Global Vice Chairman Macquarie Bank (Entertainment & media), IMAX Board Member, ex CEO News Corp Europe: “I have seen every major shift in media over the past three decades and today 65% of digital leaders are prepared to cut legacy media investments to support their digital efforts. Every media company in the world faces this problem and must embrace Cloud, mobile & data solutions. BUCKiTDREAM is one of the innovative solutions that media worldwide needs now to be relevant to their audience and advertisers, and that’s why I invested and joined the Board.”
Peter O’Brien, BUCKiTDREAM Director and Investor in BUCKiTDREAM: “As a former Tourism Australia Director, I am very aware that getting North Americans to act on their aspiration to visit Australia is the tricky part because of their huge choice of destinations, short holidays and distance to Australia. Tim has enabled Australian operators to economically cut through the fog by directly linking them with his US BUCKiTDREAM database which is a priceless advantage.”
Barry Cupples Global Investment CEO at Omnicom media Group: “BUCKiTDREAM has successfully bridged myth to reality. The simplicity of managing your own dreams in today’s world of engagement and technology make this platform a marketer’s dream. I can sense the excitement amongst brands with the rich data and targeting capability this will enable them to access. Pure gold.”
John Zeigler, former CEO DDB Asia Pacific and Investor in BUCKiTDREAM: “The ad optimisation segment is the fastest growing media and now valued at more than $5 billion. Consumer intention data is the most valuable data in the world. BUCKiTDREAM unlocks consumer dreams and future buying intentions. Out with a media efficiency model and in with an effectiveness intention data model few others can deliver.”
There is no doubt Carroll has done the hard yards and it is paying off. BUCKiTDREAM is now a global early-stage venture powered by global private capital. In fact $US7million has been invested in the company as it prepares for its first strategic investment round. High profile Sydney entrepreneur Trevor Folsom has also invested $US1 million in BUCKiTDREAM via his member-based investment vehicle the Investible Club and in the process has become the company’s largest global investor.
Folsom and Investible are the latest high-profile investors to back BUCKiTDREAM. Folsom co-founded Investible with his long-time business partner Creel Price. The duo founded Investible to support the development of Australian entrepreneurs as well as provide its growing membership base with the opportunity to invest alongside Investible in high-quality, early-stage ventures, such as BUCKiTDREAM.
As part of Investible’s participation, Folsom has ensured his members have the option to follow their initial investment in BUCKiTDREAM into the company’s first strategic/institutional funding round.
“Every consumer in the world – no different to any entrepreneur and investor – has a dream they seek to fulfil, so the global market is huge. We are thrilled with the early stage results,” Folsom said.
“The dream platform connects dreamers with merchants and will scale with media, brand and merchant commercial partnerships. We expect BUCKiTDREAM to make major partnership announcements over the 12 months and we are seriously impressed with the US and global partners they are engaged with now. We want to help BUCKiTDREAM scale and capture the significant global upside associated with “the dream economy”.
Carroll has also had some high profile celebrities back his vision including Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Cup, Olympic snowboard champion Shaun White as well as Ellen DeGeneres.
“They have all been brilliant but I must bow to Ellen. Most brands buy 30-second ad spots. Ellen launched BUCKiTDREAM with a five-minute segment to 24 countries powered by 60 million tweets and 25 million
Facebook posts.”
Carroll said it is the biggest marketing campaign he has been associated with “and I was part of some massive global campaigns at Village Roadshow”.
The world’s biggest media, Brands and Merchants have embraced BUCKiTDREAM, share the vision and have BUCKiTDREAM primed for a big latter part of 2016 and 2017.
And what’s on Carroll’s bucket list? “I want to dream bold and dream big so taking BUCKiTDREAM to a NASDQ IPO is at the top of the list.”